Damien Murphy

Humans have argued over the existence of God for much of their history, but science gave the nod to the existence of the God particle this week, awarding a Nobel prize to the physicists who theorised it as a way of explaining why mass exists.

Their theory had spent nearly 50 years waiting in the wilderness while scientists around the world fiddled around on other important discoveries, including the Standard Model of physics, quarks and leptons.

Scientists then cranked up the Large Hadron Collider, the world's biggest particle smasher, located in Switzerland. It provided the experimental proof that eventually led to the inescapable conclusion that yes, the God particle did exist.

Francois Englert. Photo: Reuters

Peter Higgs of Britain and Francois Englert of Belgium won the Nobel prize in physics for the discovery of the God particle, or Higgs boson. The particle is a missing link in the Standard Model, a theory explaining how the universe is built, and its existence would help scientists gain a better understanding of how galaxies hold together. The Nobel jury honoured the pair for ''the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle''.

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The elusive boson was theorised by Higgs in 1964 when he was a young lecturer in Edinburgh, outlining what gave mass to matter as the universe cooled after the Big Bang. Now 84, he was then one of six scientists who in a three-month period devised a working theory of how elemental particles achieve mass. Higgs, pictured, received the lion's share of the recognition, not least by having the boson named after him.

Englert, 80, had been the first to publish the theory a month earlier, along with Robert Brout, a Belgian colleague who died two years ago and was not eligible for Nobel recognition because it is limited to living recipients.

Scientists hate the name ''God particle''. The term was derived from a 1993 book, The God Particle: If the Universe is the Answer, What is the Question?, by US Nobel prize winner Leon Lederman. He wanted to call the tome ''the goddamned particle'' as a reflection of his frustration at failing to find it, but his publisher, worried it might incense the US Bible Belt, suggested the change.